Rush’s Worst Songs Revealed by Alex Lifeson

Alex Lifeson deserves to be proud — to say the least — of his musical legacy with Rush. But he's perfectly willing to admit that there's a bit of filler in the band's catalog.

Lifeson looked back on Rush's less than stellar moments during a recent interview with Team Rock, readily identifying a couple of tracks after being asked to name the worst songs they've ever recorded. To his credit, while one song hails from Rush's early years, the other is of a more recent vintage.

"'Tai Shan' is one of the worst, easily," he said about the track from 1987's Hold Your Fire. Going back further to 1975's Caress of Steel, he added, "And 'Panacea.' It was an attempt at something that didn’t really work out. It was ... innocent."

As widely as he might think that latter track misses the mark, Lifeson laughingly agreed that it could sound pretty profound if it were played under the influence of ecstasy, imagining the conversation the song might inspire: "Oh my God, we really nailed this one! I love you, by the way."

Looking back on his flirtation with that particular drug in the '90s, Lifeson recalled how his "relationships opened up and became deeper" after taking it — and although he admitted it lost its thrill after a while, it was good for at least a few fun nights.

"I remember doing E one night with my wife, just the two of us. In the living room in our old house we had a huge sound system – 6,000 watts or something," he recalled. "We got dressed up and sat there drinking orange juice and smoking about a thousand cigarettes and we listened to Nine Inch Nails and Tool – all this loud, intense, heavy music. We had such a ball."